Why do we really need HP to represent things other than physical injuries?

[Crazy Jerome]

As for recovery time, I have no issue with metaphysical protection taking time to recover. There's no realistic metric for that sort of thing. I mean, we might be able to find statistics to measure the recovery rate of morale, but I expect we'd find that it varies drastically between individuals. Some people bounce back overnight from psychological events that scar others for the rest of their lives. Luck is even less measurable from a real world perspective. As such, I think that the metaphysical side of recovery can be justified regardless of what recovery rate you choose. The overnight 4e approach makes just as much sense as the weeks long recovery of 1e, in this respect.

Agree on metaphysical protection, but morale recovery, when measured, has been found to be surprisingly consistent. You get outliers, but not as much as you might think. This came out of studies started during WWII (done during and after) that showed how even a few nights out of the front line, with warm food, warm bed, could make a dramatic difference immediately that was somewhat sustainable. You can't maintain "peak" that way, but lots of people can maintain "highly functional" for long periods of time in adverse situations, with the right kind of breaks. (And once you drop out of "highly functional", if you don't get a break, you'll degrade rapidly, too.)

Trauma is another story, and that is where the "scars you for the rest of your life" side comes in. If current thinking is accurate, no one really bounces back from that without some kind of help. The difference is that sufficient "help" for some people is "told a buddy about it over a beer." These people seem to bounce back faster, because it is easier for them to get support. Of course, D&D is probably not going to measure the quality of each PCs' support network.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I like HP as damage and never had any problem describing them as such except with falling. Which I use a houserule where falling does 1d10 CON damage per 10ft fallen with a max of 10d10 CON. Keeps it scary but does model the possibility, however remote of dying from a 10ft fall or surviving terminal velocity impacts.

As for descriptions of things people have mentioned as hard? Red dragon bite?

"the dragon lunges downward and snatches you by your shoulder, you feel your armor pop and squeze, it dents inward and you feel yourself sliced open by your own armor all along the bite. However it holds and the dragon shakes you then tosses you back down. You hit hard but quickly roll to your feet. Your turn"

15 kobold attacks?
"You feel many impacts on your armor, some points slide in and find weak spots, you partially deflect some into cuts and slices, your bleeding all over but the cowardly creatures weak attacks were not able to find a vital point thanks to your armor. Your turn. "

NP.

However the other side. The HP represent luck and fatigue thing is ludicrous.

Imagine if you will.....

"you duck the dragons bite at the last minute, again, but your so tired from your constant ducking that you faint and fall over. "

Followed by

"thank the gods your warlord buddy noticed your dizzy spell from all the quick dodging and told you to get your together and get back in the fight allowing you to get back up and dodge at least one more attack"

Theoretically both might work, but one sounds really frickin LAME compared to the other. So i know what I pick.

The metaphysical factor in your descriptions is implicit. I use hp as mostly meta, but that doesn't mean I narrate it as in your examples.

However, consider this example. Two fighters attack a dragon, which breathes fire on them. They both fail their saves, taking 50 damage. The first fighter, who only has 20 hp, is burnt to a crisp. The second fighter, who has 100 hp, is bloodied at the worst.

Why did the second fighter live while the first died? You can go with a purely physical explanation, but that leads to some peculiar notions about the second fighter being more magical than the first. It's fine if you like that sort of thing, but not everyone does.

The other explanation is that there was some metaphysical factor involved. The second fighter was skilled enough to raise his shield on time. He was lucky enough to be standing behind a rocky outcropping that deflected most of the blast. Some supernatural being intervened on his behalf. He sensed the dragon's attack and ducked just in time. Whatever. Of course you don't describe it as meta in nature. You tell the fighter that he was seared by the flame, that he smells his hair burning, but that he's largely intact.

The meta factor is nonetheless there, and moreover far more significant in the fighter's survival than any physical factor.

 

[boredgremlin]

The metaphysical factor in your descriptions is implicit. I use hp as mostly meta, but that doesn't mean I narrate it as in your examples.

However, consider this example. Two fighters attack a dragon, which breathes fire on them. They both fail their saves, taking 50 damage. The first fighter, who only has 20 hp, is burnt to a crisp. The second fighter, who has 100 hp, is bloodied at the worst.

Why did the second fighter live while the first died? You can go with a purely physical explanation, but that leads to some peculiar notions about the second fighter being more magical than the first. It's fine if you like that sort of thing, but not everyone does.

The other explanation is that there was some metaphysical factor involved. The second fighter was skilled enough to raise his shield on time. He was lucky enough to be standing behind a rocky outcropping that deflected most of the blast. Some supernatural being intervened on his behalf. He sensed the dragon's attack and ducked just in time. Whatever. Of course you don't describe it as meta in nature. You tell the fighter that he was seared by the flame, that he smells his hair burning, but that he's largely intact.

The meta factor is nonetheless there, and moreover far more significant in the fighter's survival than any physical factor.

The first fighter only had 20 HP. Therefore he was suffering numerous wounds, bloodloss, etc that slowed his reflexes and he caught a full blast.

The same way that a knockout in combat sports is more likely to happen in later rounds because numerous injuries have slowed fighter reflexes making them less likely to block or get out of the way of a solid strike.

And let me just cut you off here cause i can see where your about to go. No they are NOT more likely to get Knocked out because they were ALMOST hit a bunch. They are more likely to get knocked out because they already got punched in the head 200 times that day and the damage is adding up.

The 2nd fighter in your example wasnt hurt so bad because he had his full speed, reflexes and awareness. Therefore he saw the dragon getting ready to breathe fire, had the presence of mind to notice a small rock, depression, direction of its head etc and the speed to dive out of the way of the direct flame.

The damage he took was heat backwash. Fire is hot all around the edges after all, not just directly in the flame. So even though he got out of the way of the direct fire he was still burned by the heat.

Somewhat off topic but thats the only way i can realistically see fire being a big cone anyway. It doesnt spread side to side much in the air, mainly up.

 

[JonWake]

Here's what I did in my home brew campaign. Every class has a damage modifier that adds to any attack they make. This increases with level at a rate determined by their class, so a 1st level fighter gets a +1 to damage while a 10th level fighter gets a +6. I also use the old 2e version of HP progression where it effectively stops after 10th level, so on average, a 10th level fighter has 54 hp.

I charted out how many average hits with a 1d8 weapon (wielded by another fighter) it would take to kill an average fighter. At first level, it takes 2 average hits( of 4 damage +1 damage modifier apiece), which is just about how lethal I want 1st level to be.

As the fighter increases in level, the number of hits they can take increases as well, with a 5th level fighter taking 5 hits and 10th level fighter taking 6 hits. Survivability levels out at 11th level at around 6 hits.

This does three things: it makes fights dangerous at every level, and makes higher level creatures very capable of killing lower level creatures in one shot. For example, a 10th level fighter can do +6 damage. With even a moderate STR bonus of +2 and using a short sword for 1d6, they can do 9-14 damage in a single hit, easily killing a first or even second level character.

It also makes rogues and fighters great anti-mage tools. With a rogue's sneak attack and a fighter's high damage bonus, mage's survivability peaks at 2 average hits from a fighter or 1 good sneak attack from a rogue.

 

[Fanaelialae]

The first fighter only had 20 HP. Therefore he was suffering numerous wounds, bloodloss, etc that slowed his reflexes and he caught a full blast.

The same way that a knockout in combat sports is more likely to happen in later rounds because numerous injuries have slowed fighter reflexes making them less likely to block or get out of the way of a solid strike.

And let me just cut you off here cause i can see where your about to go. No they are NOT more likely to get Knocked out because they were ALMOST hit a bunch. They are more likely to get knocked out because they already got punched in the head 200 times that day and the damage is adding up.

The 2nd fighter in your example wasnt hurt so bad because he had his full speed, reflexes and awareness. Therefore he saw the dragon getting ready to breathe fire, had the presence of mind to notice a small rock, depression, direction of its head etc and the speed to dive out of the way of the direct flame.

The damage he took was heat backwash. Fire is hot all around the edges after all, not just directly in the flame. So even though he got out of the way of the direct fire he was still burned by the heat.

Somewhat off topic but thats the only way i can realistically see fire being a big cone anyway. It doesnt spread side to side much in the air, mainly up.

Exactly my point. It wasn't that the first fighter had been hacked apart by previous damage. He wasn't unable to dodge because his leg was dangling from a thread of sinew. His stamina and reflexes had been affected. Meta aspects.

The second fighter's meta aspects hadn't been affected (at least not as significantly) so he was able to avoid the worst of the conflagration. Note that, nowhere in this thread have I said that hp damage is never physical damage. I've been holding to Gygax's explanation wherein a high level fighter who has take a bunch of damage will have numerous minor injuries. What I don't like is the idea that the 100 hp fighter takes 80 damage and suddenly he's dragging his intestines behind him, with no actual penalty. That works for some people, but not for me.

If the first fighter and the second fighter both get stabbed for 25 damage, the sword might stab the first fighter through the heart, but some meta factor allows the second fighter to turn that deadly attack into a graze (or, depending on the DM, a miss).

It's fine if you want to narrate every attack as dealing some degree of damage. I don't always like to because I think that sometimes it can get silly. Even if your armor absorbs the worst of it from a giant's club, you still ought to be knocked prone. So the way I narrate it is that skill or luck allowed you to narrowly avoid it, but you're moving slower now as a result of that effort. It'll be harder to avoid the next one.

Even in boxing, you can wear down your opponent without ever connecting solidly (at least until your final blow).

The meta factor is still there though. You seem to just prefer fatigue/pain description to luck/whatever. Which, again, is fine.

 

[Mercurius]

I appreciate what you are doing [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION], but isn't it a bit of as stretch, requiring too much work to get to a point where HP as physical damage only is feasible? It seems much easier to stick with Gygax and see HP as an abstraction representing different factors.

That said, I see no reason why D&D Next couldn't include some kind of body point system (e.g. body points = CON) as a modular option.

 

[boredgremlin]

Exactly my point. It wasn't that the first fighter had been hacked apart by previous damage. He wasn't unable to dodge because his leg was dangling from a thread of sinew. His stamina and reflexes had been affected. Meta aspects..

Actually you completely missed my point. He absolutely WAS unable to get out of the way because he had been cut, bruised, beaten and stabbed previously. Those sorts of things slow a guy down.

His leg wasnt hacked off or virtually so because thats 0HP. Your leg gets chopped off and your unable to move or fight and dying. Pretty much the definition of 0 HP.

At a small fraction of HP you had your knee dislocated, your muscles slashed, stiffening from bruises and an overall slowness and weakness from blood loss that makes it harder to avoid further blows.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Actually you completely missed my point. He absolutely WAS unable to get out of the way because he had been cut, bruised, beaten and stabbed previously. Those sorts of things slow a guy down.

His leg wasnt hacked off or virtually so because thats 0HP. Your leg gets chopped off and your unable to move or fight and dying. Pretty much the definition of 0 HP.

At a small fraction of HP you had your knee dislocated, your muscles slashed, stiffening from bruises and an overall slowness and weakness from blood loss that makes it harder to avoid further blows.

What if the first fighter was a low level fighter, at full hp? In that case, he simply wasn't quick enough to get out of the way. He lacked the meta factor that allowed the second fighter to survive with relatively little harm. That factor might have been sixth sense, plain luck, or something else; it really doesn't matter that much.

The point is that there were meta aspects to even allow a (wounded) fighter to get that far. Every one of those cuts or bruises could have been lethal to a low level fighter. What allowed the fighter to turn a lethal blow into a bruise? Some meta factor.

To use your original example, what causes the fighter's armor to hold when the dragon bites him? I would guess luck, as I can't imagine skill or tenacity having much to do with it. Whether or not the armor then cuts him is irrelevant to my point. If the dragon did more damage to him (enough to kill him) then the dragon's teeth would have pierced his armor and he would have died. Some meta factor inherent to hp prevented that from happening, thereby merely denting his armor.

If two human fighters are standing side-by-side, but one is high level while the other is low level, it's absurd to think (from the standpoint of a semblance of realism) that the high level fighter could withstand a sword being thrust through his gut while the low level fighter can't. Clearly, the high level fighter is simply better at avoiding becoming shish-kebab. What allows him to do so? Some meta factor. Clearly it isn't just speed. The low level fighter might have a much better dexterity, a much higher initiative, and even a better reflex save. Those don't change based on hp loss. At best, hp loss might prevent him from utilizing his speed at that moment, but that's fairly abstract and meta.

If you look at hp as purely physical, then hp are just meat. That makes sense if you compare a bear to a low level fighter, but not a high level fighter to a low level fighter. Obviously, then, hp are more than physical. If you want to always include some physical factor then, again, that's fine. But if the same attack and damage has a different outcome against a high hp/level fighter than a low hp/level fighter, then meta factors are implicit therein.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Mine is a very naive and honest question. Why can't we just live with HP representing only a creature's ability to take physical damage and injuries before dropping? What are the bad things that will happen to the game if we do that?

Because apparently super-humanly good luck is more "realistic" than super-human toughness.

 

[CM]

Because apparently super-humanly good luck is more "realistic" than super-human toughness.

No.

But a combination of luck, will to fight, adrenaline, experience, skill at avoiding and lessening/deflecting blows, and pure physical toughness is more realistic than super-human toughness.

Seriously, this whole HP = meat argument comes across as an attempt to validate the opinion that only divine magic and bed rest should be able to restore HP.